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Flash in the pan result – Ben Sutton
The Giants' win over the Swans sent shockwaves through the AFL and was no doubt the story of Round 1, but let's not get carried away with the result.
At the end of the day it was only one win in the first round of a 22-match season. Yes, it came against a top-four hopeful in Sydney, but let's put it into perspective.
The Giants have the best group of youngsters in the land with countless first-round draft picks, as well as enough gun experienced players (Callan Ward, Shane Mumford and Heath Shaw) to hold them in good stead.
They have been setting themselves for this match since the season finished last year, while the Swans were competing finals. They had a leg up on their opponents in pre-season training and it showed as the Giants were switched on, while Sydney were lacklustre and looked underdone.
It's also worth remembering the Swans were well short of their best team. Absent from the side on Saturday were dual Brownlow Medalist Adam Goodes, star forward Kurt Tippett while their captain and best midfielder Kieren Jack was a late withdrawal.
The way the game unfolded also played into the hands of the fledgling side. Severe thunderstorms in the early stages of the match resulted in an extended break at quarter-time. The young Giants were prone to fading out of matches in their first two years in the competition, but perhaps this extended break gave them the extra energy necessary to run over the top of the Swans.
The fixture interestingly opens up for the Giants now with matches to come against St Kilda and Melbourne. These are the matches they should be winning now and there are no excuses if they fail to do so.
If they can't back up their performance against Sydney with more wins against struggling teams then that result will merely be a flash in the pain.
GWS are the real deal in season 2014 – Paul Barbieri
I've got carried away a few times in my life. Things like Collingwood's fast-start to 2000, the Hawks in 2009 and how the thought of Meatloaf at a Grand Final have got the best of me on a couple of occasions. But when it comes to GWS, the Giants showed enough in their Round 1 burial of Sydney to suggest they're a bona fide AFL outfit this year.
Sometimes sport delivers fairytales and this was one of those occasions as GWS - monstered by the Swans in every single Battle of the Bridge so far- rose to the occasion by out-hustling and out-muscling one of the flag favourites, turning Buddy Franklin's Swans debut into the stuff of nightmares.
Against a stormy backdrop, we got our first real look at GWS this season and it was enough to convince me these minnows are now Giants in their own right.
The class and leadership of new arrivals Heath Shaw, Josh Hunt and Shane Mumford was evident from the get-go, with Mumford in particular belting the living daylights out of his former team-mates as he picked up 45 hit-outs.
Shaw was on hand to cut off an errant Sydney clearance at a key moment in the final term, helping set up one of six unanswered goals, while former Cat Hunt was another veteran not afraid to get down and dirty as he tunnelled the ball out of heavy traffic in the last quarter to set up another major.
Having three premiership players in the side certainly aided the efforts of blokes like Callan Ward and Phil Davis. Ward was magnificent throughout much of last year as the bloke formally known as Cement-Head at the Bulldogs led his side with aplomb. On Saturday he took it to a new level with 31 disposals, an incredible 24 of which were contested.
Along with a greater willingness to get dig in, the Giants' possession looked substantially more controlled and assured right across the ground as they focussed on short passing and effectively running into space. This forced the Swans – who appeared a trifle underdone – to spend plenty of time chasing GWS tail, while also providing a more fluid entry into the forward line for the likes of Jeremy Cameron and Jonathan Patton to feast on.
People have tended to forget Patton but the former No.1 draft pick demonstrated he's a good bet to mark anything that comes into his vicinity, effectively allowing Cameron to almost play as a crumbing forward, albeit one with some serious power. In tandem the pair kicked seven of the Giants' 13 goals on Saturday and with Tom Boyd to be added to the mix, one wonders why they were bothering to consider Franklin in the first place.
Above all things, the Giants simply looked leaner, harder and tougher than they ever have before. Lachie Whitfield looked good last season but looks to have stepped things up further over the pre-season and is set to take the comp by storm. He's probably not alone.
Stephen Coniglio is another example. Having come to GWS with big wraps from his WAFL days, the youngster has hardly set the world on fire. That all changed on Saturday as he picked up 27 touches and laid a game-high 11 tackles, while also kicking the goal that levelled proceedings in the final term.
Of all the players in the Giants squad, one would hardly have expected Coniglio, who's averaged just over three tackles in his first 30 games, to deliver 11 in a single match. To put that into perspective, the highest number of tackles for any GWS player was 12 from Mark Whiley against Geelong last year, while 11 had only been achieved on two other occasions.
Coniglio's efforts were symptomatic of just how much the Giants have learnt about defensive pressure throughout a brutal 2013, where that was one of Kevin Sheedy's primary focusses for his more attack-minded players.
Coniglio's 11 was one part of 88 tackles laid by the Giants against Sydney – the team's second highest on record behind the 107 they laid against Fremantle last year. But aside from the numbers, it was the effectiveness of the tackles that counted as they used them to control the contest in slippery conditions.
Sure, an extended quarter-time break due to the storm probably helped the young side maintain their intensity for longer – Jonathan Patton said as much on SEN this morning – but they were still doing it against a flag favourite, one of the teams known for intense Bloods footy.
The middle of winter may still be unkind on GWS. But now the whole competition knows a date with the Giants isn't an automatic four points in the bank and the likes of St Kilda, Brisbane and Melbourne should be very, very afraid.
We were all wondering who the 2014 version of Port Adelaide would be. Maybe we've just found out.